


'Til Our Compass Stands Still

by chatnoir16



Category: The Bedlam Stacks - Natasha Pulley
Genre: Character Study, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-04
Updated: 2020-04-04
Packaged: 2021-02-23 13:07:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,731
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23478694
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chatnoir16/pseuds/chatnoir16
Summary: Raphael’s POV of arriving at the monastery. (Dialogue borrowed from the text.)
Relationships: Raphael/Merrick Tremayne
Comments: 10
Kudos: 27





	'Til Our Compass Stands Still

Raphael is hovering, and it’s clear he’s making the doctor examining Merrick nervous. That’s just too bad; he’ll sleep at any moment and before he does, he _has_ to be sure Merrick, still unconscious, will be alright. 

By the time he’d reached Merrick on the road, the other markayuq guards had stepped away, but Merrick was unconscious and unmoving. Raphael was pathetically glad they’d listened to his barked order to protect Merrick from the fire. He’d knelt and touched his fingers to Merrick’s neck, hoping against reason for a pulse. When he felt it, it was faint. He hoped that meant it was a normal pulse to anyone else, and his inability to feel it was a result of his own condition. He placed a palm on Merrick’s chest and felt it rise with his breath.

Raphael had gathered Merrick in his arms and refused to let go when the envoy came in to retrieve him and take him up to the city. He demanded to see a doctor, and when the clerics balked - as if Merrick wasn’t worthy enough to merit help - he flatly stated that Merrick was the only reason he’d made it back at all. They’d scrambled to help after that. He carried Merrick, still unconscious, through the temple, to the room where the doctor led them and laid him on the bed. He was home after more than a century away, but he didn’t bother looking around at the halls of his childhood. He’d have centuries more to see it, but only a few hours, maybe, to see Merrick before it would all be over. He had very carefully adjusted Merrick’s head to rest on the velvet pillow and stepped back to let the doctor work, ignoring the pressing from the monastery clerics who’d trailed after them. 

Now, from the other side of the room where he’s standing, Raphael can’t tear his eyes away from the pale, slack face, the golden hair spilling on the pillow. Merrick had refused to leave him even when Raphael pushed him away; he will not abandon Merrick now. So he watches and waits, a silent, heavy presence at the doctor’s back.

Once the doctor reassures him that Merrick will be fine and just needs to sleep, Raphael allows the clerics to coax him outside onto a deep balcony with a wide bench overlooking the gardens, to answer their questions while the doctor looks him over. They want to send Merrick to Bedlam to recover immediately. Raphael holds firm. “No. If you send him back there, you might as well send me back, too, for another hundred years. I would have frozen alone in the forest if he had not helped me.” That shuts them up rather effectively.

It’s all Raphael can do right now to stay awake. He is home at last, the sounds of his first language drifting around him. He feels like the next time he stops, it’ll be for decades, and he needs to know that Merrick is all right before he can rest. Raphael wants to say goodbye and to look at his face, memorize the features that are so familiar, map out where they diverge from Harry so he can carry them both with him. If he can have that moment, it will have to be enough.

When the clerics finally leave him alone, he occupies himself by imagining what it would be like to wander these garden paths with Merrick, their arms brushing, stopping frequently for him to exclaim over each different, impossible specimen somehow thriving at this impossible altitude in this impossible city. He’d loved Harry’s enthusiasm for all of the local fauna, and he wonders what Merrick would be like, relaxed and without the looming pressure of his India Office mission. His incredulous joy over seeing the candle ivy for the first time had been lovely to watch, and he wants to see it again. He wishes he could have a chance to see it, but when he wakes, decades from now, he’ll wander the gardens alone, with only the memory of Merrick beside him and Harry’s voice still in his head.

It’s not fair to Merrick to keep comparing him to a man he’d never met, but Raphael will always love Harry. Perhaps, like his memory, his love is carved in stone. Only in the last few days has he begun to give Merrick credit for his own sake. He is just as lovely and golden as Harry was, but Merrick is the solid brass framework of a clockwork lamp - practical and steady, while Harry had been the shimmering pollen - illuminating and vivacious. Harry had called himself ornamental, while Merrick was anything but. With Harry, it could never have been what Raphael had longed for, but Merrick... if he let himself, he could imagine what life could be like if Raphael had more time and Merrick would stay in Bedlam with him, hanging up the laundry together and taking turns making dinner. He won’t though; wishing for the impossible will do him no favors.

The best-case scenario is that Merrick wakes up soon, so Raphael can say goodbye. Then Raphael will sleep and Merrick will leave, and then he’ll blink awake and only have his daydreams for real company. He’s feeling heavier the longer he waits out here. Just a little longer. He needs to stay awake a little longer to make sure Merrick is alright. He looks over the city, cataloguing how it’s changed since his childhood, watches the fire-fighting through a pair of binoculars. He can see again, up here in the sun.

He hears the creaking of the door hinges behind him, and he turns to look. Merrick is battered and weary, but still beautiful, his bruised face full of relief as he makes his unsteady way towards Raphael. The sight spurs Raphael to his feet. He takes Merrick’s unbandaged arm as gently as he can manage, and helps Merrick over to the bench. In the bright sunlight, Raphael can finally see him again in detail. He looks ill, from getting caught in the fire and from the altitude, but his colors are still luminous in the reflected light.

Raphael settles next to him, presses their shoulders together briefly. Shielding his eyes from the sun with one hand, Merrick looks at him. “You look better.”

“It’s the altitude,” Raphael replies. “We were made for up here. It’s twenty-five thousand feet. You won’t feel well.”

Merrick looks grumpy at that. “There are yak in Nepal that wouldn’t survive at twenty-five thousand feet.” He shivers, and Raphael passes him a blanket, helps settle it around his shoulders as he huddles into it. “Twenty-five thousand… there are no mountains that high in Peru. Are there?”

“We’re not on a mountain,” he says, pointing outward for Merrick to look. 

Merrick stares, registering the floating city, and exhales hard. “Am I… allowed to be here?”

“There are only one or two of us in a generation now. They left me in Bedlam for a hundred years and they’re feeling guilty. You can do whatever I want.”

“They?”

The clerics in charge here, and the… The Prior.”

“Did they save the forest?”

Raphael hands over the binoculars. “Still saving it. There are aqueducts that cut through; it’s divided into fire zones. You’d never lose more than a fraction of it.” 

Merrick watches the action for a moment before handing the binoculars back. “Jesus. Someone’s going to stumble over this place soon. There are rubber expeditions starting out round here, and that’s forgetting coffee and pepper farmers, and…” he shakes his head. “Small countries with valuable resources always have to give them away in the end or they’re crushed. You can’t live in the middle of a nascent whitewood monopoly. Is there some kind of plan here to deal with -”

This man. Even struggling with altitude sickness, his brain is always working. He’s seen something precious and he wants to protect it because at the heart of him, Merrick is a caretaker, the true soul of a gardener. Raphael says, “I’ve been here two hours, I don’t know. Calm down. It’s been hidden for four hundred years; no one’s coming in the next ten minutes.”

“No, I know. This is… I’m too altitude-stupid for good adjectives. It’s incredible.” He leans forward against the banister, tired but keeping his eyes forward, taking it all in. Raphael is pleased he likes it.

As they lapse into silence, Raphael feels sleep creeping up again. Soon, he will blink and Merrick will have disappeared, his brightness vanished with him, and Raphel will be left to carry the memory of the two golden men time has cost him for however many centuries he has left. Merrick is still young; by the time Raphael wakes again, he’ll have moved on, perhaps gone back to England to marry and have children. Raphael will be one of many characters in the stories he’d tell them of his adventures. Or perhaps, with his restored ability to walk, Merrick would resume his adventurous lifestyle and get himself shot smuggling for the India Office - he could die alone in a jungle somewhere five years from now, and Raphael will blink awake to a world where no one will know what happened to him.

The scribe could not have chosen a worse time to approach with Merrick’s invitation to return. “Oh, he doesn’t want that.”

Typically stubborn, Merrick says, “You don’t know. What is it?”

“Permission to come back when I wake. It’s not…”

Merrick looks at the khipu. His face does something strange. “You’d rather I didn’t.”

“You won’t want to. It will be years and years.” Even if he wants to come back now, he won’t in a few decades. He will have died or forgotten or ceased to care, and Raphael would never know which it was. All of those options hurt.

“Well - I will, but that isn’t -” He stops, takes a breath, and looks Raphael in the eye. Merrick has been surprising him since the evening they met in Azangaro, so he should have seen it coming. Merrick sits up straighter and says with a self-deprecating grimace, “Look, I know I’m not Harry, I know I’ve been standing in. If you don’t want me to come back, I won’t. But I want to come back.”

It hits Raphael hard in that moment, a nebulous feeling crystalizing into something sharp and clear, that Merrick isn’t the poor man’s version of his grandfather, and he isn’t a consolation prize. He’d had a year to come to love Harry, and he’s only known Merrick a fortnight, but it’s never been more apparent that this man is precious in his own right. Merrick has been forged and formed in ways Harry never had been - he’s determined, compassionate, and ruthless, and he put the whole of the British Empire on hold to help Raphael when he should have taken those cuttings and run. He stayed despite Raphael’s attempts to shake him off. Merrick sees Raphael as he is, unlike anyone else still living: not as a saint, but as a person. Raphael will miss him terribly.

If Merrick wants to come back, Raphael will not be the one to tell him no.

He reaches past Merrick to take the string from the scribe. Raphael makes his knots quickly, so he won’t freeze before he’s given permission.

“What are you writing?” Merrick asks.

“Your name and my signature. Not Harry - you’re damn right you’re not Harry. He would never have done any of this. He worried too much about getting home to do anything much at all.” As the scribe walks away, Raphael adds, “This isn’t binding to you, only to them.”

“I’ll be here.”

“Yes, well.” Merrick wants to come back. Even if he doesn’t actually do it - if he can’t, or if he changes his mind... in this moment he wants to, and that’s something. However unlikely, if anyone would, it would be this stubborn man. As the door closes behind the scribe, Raphael focuses again on Merrick, allows himself another touch to Merrick’s arm as an excuse to pass over the whitewood pinecone. “Souvenir.”

Merrick carefully cradles the treasure in his hands. “Am I allowed to have…”

“No. But if there are other whitewood forests, no one will care too much about this one, will they?”

He stares at the seeds in his palms and nods gravely. When the steward comes in, Merrick gets up, keeping his hands out of sight. “I’ll make some coffee,” he declares, a bit too loudly. “Do you want some?”

“Please.”

Raphael can hear Merrick rustling in his bag, and he feels content, his whole being relaxing. When he opens his eyes, the light has shifted slightly. He still hears Merrick bustling with the coffee things, so he must not have been out for long. It’s nice to have him here, soak him in, while Raphael waits to fall asleep. Merrick’s gait sounds stronger as he approaches and settles on the bench beside him. Raphael turns to him with a smile, ready to thank him for the coffee, and freezes. 

The bruise on his cheek, the scrapes, are gone. His skin has a healthy golden glow, and there are lines around his eyes and mouth that didn’t exist just a moment ago. Silver glints at his temples. He’s in different clothes, dressed for the altitude, his arm no longer bandaged. Raphael is stunned speechless; he is still feeling melancholy that Merrick would likely not return for him, but those thoughts are slamming into an entirely new reality, and it’s completely overwhelming. Merrick had to have left, and for years, but here he is, in the middle of the same moment with Raphael. He notices his own rosary on Merrick’s wrist, like it belongs there, faint tan lines visible beneath the faded beads. Merrick had kept it and worn it all this time.

It’s clear in that instant that Merrick is not here out of obligation, or else he wouldn’t be picking up exactly where they left off as if no time had passed for him either. Raphael would have expected that if he had planned to come back, Raphael would blink awake, realize Merrick was gone, and then have the steward write to him and invite him to visit. Months later, Merrick would show up as if greeting an old friend. But this - the coffee and the rosary - it means something profound.

Merrick is here, the evidence of a whole life on his face, holding out a cup of coffee like it really has been minutes since Raphael asked for some. Merrick looks at him, steady and warm, expression open, drinking in the sight of Raphael like _he’s_ somehow the remarkable one, like Merrick isn’t a breathing miracle in front of him. 

Silently, Merrick holds out one of the cups and Raphael takes it. He can feel, faintly, the pressure of Merrick’s fingers brushing his as he lets go. Merrick looks down at the contact, and with anyone else, Raphael would worry that they were wary of him, but Merrick just smiles, eyes crinkling in a new way that Raphael likes, and brings his eyes back up, looking like there’s nowhere else he’d rather be. His voice is the same when he says, “You like it black, don’t you.”

Raphael laughs, delighted and so grateful that he’s suddenly made of air instead of stone. He can feel his voice is rougher, deeper, and barely there, but he still has it.

He has to ask. “How long?” It comes out a raspy rumble, and it’s harder to speak, but he wants to keep doing it. He wants to talk to Merrick like a real person, without the translations and interventions of others.

Merrick looks him in the eye. “Twenty-one years and five months. It’s the fifteenth of June, 1882.”

Christ. And Merrick is here, against all odds, because that’s who he is. He undertook a dangerous expedition to the Andean highlands when he was unable to walk unaided - it should not be surprising that he still isn’t doing things the easy way. In the blink of an eye, Raphael has missed a quarter of Merrick’s life. He has twenty years, maybe thirty, left. Raphael steers away from that thought. A quarter of his life, and Merrick came back to him. He doesn’t want to miss any more of it, wants to watch over this extraordinary man for as long as he lives, witness every moment he has left on earth. An impossibility, but that doesn’t stop Raphael wishing for it. He suddenly understands the devotion of his ancestors who followed the Incan kings to their tombs.

He wants to reach out and touch Merrick - trace the lines on his face, brush through the silver in his hair, feel the solidity of him. It’s a shame that Raphael wasn’t awake to watch the crinkles around his eyes deepen, to count the years of smiles that formed them, to have earned some of those smiles for himself. Just a few hours ago for Raphael, he was lifting Merrick down from the smashed masonry on the glass road, enjoying the feel of him in his hands. He has wanted to touch Merrick since the night they met - first to chase a memory, but now because of everything this man is. 

What has his life been like? He looks healthy in a way he hadn’t twenty years ago, for all that he’s visibly aged. It takes an effort, but Raphael manages to scrape out, “Tell me. Your life.”

Merrick, always full of surprises, asks in near-perfect Quechua, “Shall I tell you in English, or would you like to hear it in Quechua?”

Raphael is startled into laughter again. The Tremayne men have always managed to make him laugh, and he feels so joyful with it now. He never imagined he’d have a reason to laugh again when he woke up.

“English,” he grunts. He knows there will be eyes on them, and he wants as much privacy as possible. No one in this city speaks it - even Spanish is rare up here.

Merrick chuckles. “I promise I’ll tell you all about it. But first, I’m not the only one who’s been waiting for you,” he says, nodding over Raphael’s shoulder. Raphael sighs and lets his eyes linger on Merrick’s resigned expression. The doctor will want to examine Raphael, and the clerics will want to be sure he’s kept his mind after the transformation; it’s been a very long time since a markayuq has turned successfully. There are so few left.

Raphael can hear footsteps approaching. “Stay?” he asks in Quechua. The footsteps falter at the sound of his voice. He wants them to hear this, that Merrick is to stay if he wants.

Merrick’s smile goes soft again. “Yes,” he says in Quechua, clear as glass. “For as long as you want.”

That’s impossible, but Raphael appreciates the sentiment anyway.

Merrick stands to make room for the officials, but stays in sight, leaning back against the balcony railing and watching everyone fuss over him with amused eyes. He’s so bright up here - the glint of his hair and glow of his skin - this man was made for a sun temple. His eyes are a mossy green and they sparkle in the light. The gilding on the whitewood band around his leg has dulled with age but still shines up here. He’s gained some weight; he looks healthy and strong now. Raphael finds it difficult to tear his eyes away. When he does, he catches sight of crowds of people below, here to watch him wake up. Raphael understands it - he’s a symbol of a way of life that’s slowly dying out. Everyone in this city wants him to still be himself - well, to keep his sanity and be a proper markayuq. The only one who sees Raphael as a human being is the golden man with smiling eyes who came back for him.

The clerics would be horrified to hear that just last night, for Raphael at least, Merrick had called him a pointless fossil and told him to shut up. That’s exactly why Raphael wants him around so badly. He wonders how long Merrick can stay.

The doctor declares that Raphael should be awake for a good long while before he sleeps again. He warns that Raphael likely won’t have use of his voice for much longer - a few months maybe - and that it’s uncommon for him to have it at all. That’s fine with him, as long as he can give his words to Merrick. The doctor wants him to stand to examine how he moves. Raphael blinks for a moment before slowly getting to his feet. It affords him a better view of the gathered crowd. He nods to them, raises a hand, and a cheer rises up. If Raphael still had the ability, he would have blushed. The doctor gestures for him to step forward, and looks satisfied when he does. The clerics look relieved.

Raphael walks over to Merrick, who’s grinning now. He stops beside him, and they’re nearly eye level since Merrick is propped against the banister. Raphael can still feel what it felt like to hug him, to wrap his arms around Merrick as he trembled with the shock of strangling Martel. He’d been thinner, more sickly, but it had felt lovely to hold on to him. Merrick’s lips had brushed his temple as they’d stood by the river, gazing at the cinchona trees on the other side. He won’t be allowed to hold Merrick up here, but just having him nearby is more than he would have dreamed.

He pulls his focus back to Merrick’s face. Merrick’s eyes are dancing as he murmurs, “You have an adoring audience, St. Raphael.” 

“Fuck off,” he grumbles, glancing past him at the gathered crowd. He wishes they’d stop gawking at him.

Merrick laughs and raises an eyebrow. “That’s not very saintly,” he teases. 

Once the clerics no longer have an excuse for lingering, the doctor shoos them out, leaving them alone with just the guards keeping watch. The possibility of what could come next is suddenly a vast sea behind them instead of a narrow stream.

Raphael may be made of stone, but he hasn't felt so light in a hundred years.

**Author's Note:**

> The last line of the book is, “He laughed,” and I waffled a lot about whether that means silent laughter or whether Raphael might still have use of his vocal cords for a while - whether his transformation will continue in small ways once he wakes. So, creative license, I decided to let him talk a bit.
> 
> Title from "West" by Sleeping at Last.


End file.
